Maximilian Rödel

Boundary-dissolving, space-opening and immersive, allowing for associations and yet intangible and concealed, Maximilian Rödels' (*1984) characteristic color-abstracted oil paintings unfold a timeless and spatial validity and seemingly effortless complexity that allow for profound reflections on the Anthropocene.The color behaves diffusely on the canvas; it condenses, drapes itself like a nebulous veil over pictorial areas or at times develops a dazzling radiance. In Rödel's works, color itself is elevated to the central pictorial object, thus transcending its primordial function as a representational carrier medium. In terms of art history, classically situated in the tradition of American Abstract Expressionism, as it emerged particularly in New York in the 1940s and 50s with its numerous sub-currents, the artist's canvas surfaces are treated as a field of vision without a central focal point. Specifically in the large-scale works, the color spaces seem to transcend the recipient's peripheral field of vision. The result is a transcendental act of viewing, which is characterized by both the immediacy of sensory experience and by the profound potential for contemplation that arises from it. In the sense of a large-scale and generous application of color as well as a careful compositional construction, which nevertheless follows an intuitive process of creation, clear parallels to Color Field Art become apparent. The increased formal reduction, in turn, shares essential pictorial arrangement strategies of the Minimal Art that emerged in the early 1960s. These characteristics, stemming from the history of abstraction, are translated into highly contemporary and simultaneously supra-temporal paintings of glistening beauty and raw imagery.

Maximilian Rödel first studied at the HbK Braunschweig with Walter Dahn and Hartmut Neumann. This was followed by studies at the UdK Berlin with Thomas Zipp and Robert Lucander, which he completed in 2011 as a master student of the latter. His works have been exhibited at significant venues including Kunstverein Arnsberg, Kunstverein Hannover, Freies Museum Berlin and the Indianapolis Museum of Contemporary Art and are part of renowned private and institutional collections, particularly in Germany and the USA.